Matoky
Entertainment Website
Matoky is a Digital Pop Culture Magazine providing the latest news in Music, Entertainment, TV & Movies, Food, Gadgets and much much more. It is a trend-setting, online source for everything Pop. Matoky also boasts a thriving Instagram account, and together with the website, grant visitors a complete coverage of what’s new in the world of Pop Culture.
Client
Young and trendy men and women in their early 20s to late 30s who enjoy knowing first-hand what’s happening in the world of Pop Culture.
My role
UX/UI Designer, content creator and publisher. I create content and publish it on a daily basis, both on the website and the Instagram account in order to provide the best and latest Pop Culture news.
Brief
Create, design and publish a Digital Pop Culture website that will appeal to the designated client.
KPIs
- Average session duration on site 3+ minutes.
- 100+ unique visits daily.
- Bounce Rate lower than 20%.
- 10% average Click-Through Rate.
- 100 Organic social media followers daily.
Challenge
Making an Israeli Digital Pop Culture website that is fun, simple to use, playful and visually appealing, yet at the same time have it contain large amounts of text composed of articles, paragraphs, banners, columns and so on.
SOLUTION
I created a colorful website, with large images and small paragraphs in order to make it appear less textual and more visually friendly.
My Design Process
Research
Define
Ideate
Prototype
Final UI
Research
I began my research by learning who my competition is, understanding their strengths and weaknesses, and what are my advantages as a Pop Culture connoisseur. I then handed a questionnaire to 14 potential users who fit the client specifications, asking them which Digital Pop Culture Publication they subscribe to and follow, and what they feel is missing in many of these publications.
Competitors
Pplus – One of the hottest sites for gossip and Pop Culture, which began as a physical magazine (Pnai Plus).
Their advantage is their homepage which opens immediately with today’s top articles and stories, and the sidebar contains all social media links.
TMI – One of the best online gossip sites that depicts large images which attract the reader’s eye immediately.
Their advantage is their use of large images and titles that leave no room for mistakes, and immediately catch the reader’s reaction. Their use of clickbait mechanism is also quite prevalent.
Walla Celebs – A popular gossip and celebrity news site that is a child site of the well-known site Walla.
Their advantage is the depiction of their most clicked/watched article as a large image, whereas all other articles appear as thumbnails.
Persona
Ben Dor
Age: 28
Status: Single
Occupation: Home Decorator
Residence: Tel-Aviv
Ben is a really cool guy who lives in the center of Tel Aviv and is very much into Pop Culture. He loves Pop music, movies and TV shows, he follows all the latest trends and loves hearing all the latest gossip from his favorite celebrities. Ben is looking for a website that combines his interests in the Pop Culture world, with articles he can read while commuting to and from his work in the mornings and the afternoons. Ben is fast-paced, and he wants his gossip on-demand. He also dislikes reading long and tedious articles, and most of all he loves visually-pleasing and easy-to-navigate websites.
UX Design
User flow
The user’s journey in Matoky begins by clicking on a search engine result for an article related to Israeli Pop Culture, whether it be a famous celebrity or the 10 hottest restaurants in Tel Aviv in 2021. Once clicking on the result, the user is transferred to the article page in the Matoky website. When he finishes reading the article, the user has the option to roam around the website by navigating to the homepage. From there he can search for more articles that interest him or read the articles that are displayed in the homepage. For each article the user is able to comment and vote whether he liked the article or not, and also select emoticons depicting how he felt after reading the article. He can also click on the social media links and be transferred to Matoky’s social media accounts.
Wireframes
When starting the project I had a clear vision of how I wanted Matoky to look like. I created Hi-Fidelity Wireframes with that vision in mind. The main section of the homepage is a carousel that shifts every 10 seconds and randomly displays 4 images representing 4 different articles. Next to the carousel are thumbnails displaying the top 5 viewed articles of the week. Below that are the different categories, such as Music, TV & Movies, Gadgets, Food, etc… Each category consists of a large image displaying the latest article in that category, and below that a number of thumbnails displaying other articles in that category.
Final UI Design
Typography
Main Font – Miriam Libre – A simple and “silly” font that is easy to read and has a somewhat retro feel to it.
In some cases, the font is used in its Italic form to emphasize certain article titles.
Colors
I used a simple Blue color as the base for the entire website in order to give it a more soothing and homey vibe, and added Yellow and Pink for contrast. Yellow – for the gossip aspect and Pink – for playfulness.
Reaction
The website was extremely well-received, SEO-wise, and immediately after launch was visited by hundreds of visitors of the designated audience. The majority of visitors – 76% – arrived via Google Search results, which was as expected, and the rest arrived via social media links, especially Instagram and Facebook.